Jack's Market
Opened: December 12, 2025
Welcome to midtown Manhattan! We're at the corner of W 32nd Street and 6th Avenue here, two blocks south of the famous Herald Square Macy's (and, well, Herald Square itself), just a block east of Penn Station/Madison Square Garden, and a block and a half west of the Empire State Building. This is the border of midtown and Koreatown, and a building here at 110 W 32nd Street has just seen a new supermarket open in the first two floors. It's part of a bigger redo of the whole building, which previously had a Jack's 99 Cent Store on the ground floor and offices above. Now, 30,000 square feet of the building is home to Jack's Marketplace, and the offices above will become apartments.
Here are some pictures from May 2024 showing the dollar store closed but nothing yet in its space. And because of the central midtown location, space is at a premium -- so even a 30,000 square foot supermarket, which would be rather small in the suburbs, is huge here. An H Mart a few blocks away has a footprint of just 6000 square feet, but space on the second floor as well; a Fairway in Chelsea at 6th and 25th is quite a bit larger but still only about 20,000 square feet. That's the big selling point of this new supermarket: it has basically the services and selections of a much larger, suburban store, but packed into a midtown location. (The Whole Foods in Chelsea is larger, at 35,000 square feet.)
Unfortunately, there continues to be construction ongoing in the building above Jack's as well as on 32nd Street itself, so visibility to the store is all but zero. And this store is only called Jack's because of the previous tenant here -- the owner is not Jack but Hi Jong Lee (or Harold Lee), who also owns Food World and SuperFresh stores. This store represents a big jump up as it's a higher-profile and also higher-end store.
I visited on opening day, which was Friday. The store has entrances on 32nd and 31st streets, but we're going to tour from 32nd Street. This helpful directory greets us as we enter. As we'll see, the layout is crazy as they have tried to incorporate as much as possible into this awkward urban building. On the first floor, we have the registers up at the front along with lots of grab-and-go prepared foods on the right side of the store. On the left side, we start with a staircase up to the second floor, followed by deli, bakery, prepared foods, and sushi counters. Behind that are meat and seafood counters wrapping around a peninsula, with packaged meats and flowers in the back-left corner. Produce takes up the large space in the back-right corner of the store, with dairy on the right side. On the second floor, grocery aisles extend basically in every direction, with a dedicated K-beauty department (we are in Koreatown, after all) on the left side and frozen foods, beer, and international in the back.
Here's the entrance to the store, with the registers to the right of the shelving below. As it was opening day when I visited, there were lots of notable people, including this group of store ownership and management right at the front and various Key Food representatives around the store.
Although this is a different decor package than Howard Lee's other stores, you'll see some similar graphics and signage throughout.
The "kitchenette", or prepared foods counter, is the largest and most prominent service department. Service deli is at the back of this section, along with bakery and sushi.
And a cheese island is opposite that.
We're at the southern end of midtown here, not far from Chelsea -- a less-dense neighborhood with more, and larger, supermarkets. But to have this large, full-service, and mainstream supermarket right in such a central location is notable. There are other Key Food stores nearby, though. Both are Food Emporiums, at 8th and 49th and 10th and 42nd. Both were acquired from A&P in 2015. Those are far enough away that there's likely to be almost no overlap in the customers between those two stores.
Looking up towards the front of the supermarket...
The metal mesh design here is similar enough to what we recently saw at the Food Universe in Flatbush that I wonder if it's the same design or architecture firm. Obviously, these are very different stores.
It doesn't look like there's an in-store bakery, but there's bread and pastries in the cases here.
Service seafood and meat counters are behind that, with produce to the right in the below picture.
The butcher counter is one of the most notably upscale features here, although overall the store is higher-end than the New Jersey SuperFresh locations.
Even the nearby Fairway doesn't have a service meat counter, although it does have a number of options this store doesn't.
Packaged meats are behind the service counter in the back-left corner of the store.
And produce is opposite that. This produce department is large and spacious, set up much more like a suburban store than a crowded New York City supermarket.
There's also another entrance back here, from 31st Street, but there isn't an exit (no registers in the back of the store here).
Even though Key Food stores tend to be very different from each other -- look no further than the Flatbush Food Universe and this one, as I mentioned -- there are some notable similarities. Even the display of produce here is not that different from the new Food Emporium up in Brookfield, CT.
Floral and organic produce are at the back of the produce department.
Clearly, they're expecting to do quite a bit of volume here. We'll see if they can sustain enough to pay the rent, which I can only imagine must be astronomical. On the other hand, it's possible the store owner is also the property owner or at least a partner in the building, which as I mentioned above was recently sold but the buyer was not identified.
Dairy runs in an aisle on the right side of the store, behind the deli and prepared foods departments.
Heading back up to the front of the store, let's go up to the second floor...
(...and yes, there are also elevators).
Here you can get a sense of the layout of the second floor. The K-beauty department, which didn't appear to be open yet when I visited, is right at the top of the staircase, and grocery aisles extend across the store in front of and next to the staircase. Behind that is a ramp that takes you down into the frozen and international departments.
The grocery aisles are short and somewhat awkward because of the unusual space. I don't think there's a supermarket in Manhattan without some weird corners.
The selection has all the basics along with some more specialty selections, and I noticed fewer storebrand products (which, for Key Food stores, is Urban Meadow) than other locations.
Beer and soda are at the back of the grocery room.
Then, we move down this ramp to frozen. Once we get up to the second floor, the experience becomes much more that of a mainstream supermarket than the more specialized and higher-end first floor. The aisle markers and other decor seems to be basically the same as what they're using in New Jersey.
That's also probably intentional -- there are a plethora of specialty markets in this area, and delis, and restaurants, and gourmet markets, but not a lot of everyday mainstream supermarkets. This store's large (for the neighborhood) size allows them to have a little of both.
On the left side of the frozen foods room is the international department, which is heavy on the Korean and Japanese foods given the neighborhood but also has a kosher department.
There are a few more short grocery aisles up here with international foods, but mostly this area is frozen.
Ramen department!
The Korean and Asian frozen foods selection wraps around from the international department over towards frozen foods.
These are nice selections but I really am not in love with this font, which has been used in the SuperFresh and Food World stores for years. It just reminds me of what word art looked like when I was in middle school.
Still, it's a well thought out and organized frozen selection -- as straightforward as it can be in the bizarre space.
Heading back over into the grocery side of things...
The bulk of the grocery aisles are in the front of the second floor.
The wall you can see below is the wall facing 32nd Street.
Circling back down via the K-beauty department...
And here's an overview of the front of the first floor.
The registers are in an unusual setup, to maximize how many you can have in a small space. Notice that there are three on either side of the area with three more in the middle.
And each register is named for a local neighborhood, a fun touch.
This is perhaps the most ambitious store that this ownership group has attempted, so we'll see if they can continue to follow through on execution. But it's a unique and jam-packed store in a very central location, so there's a lot of potential here. Don't miss the rest of this weekend's posts!
Opened: December 12, 2025
Owner: Hi Jong Lee
Previous Tenants: Jack's 99 Cent Store
Cooperative: Key Food Stores
Location: 110 W 32nd St, Manhattan, NY
Photographed: May 1, 2024 and December 12, 2025
Grab-and-go is the key word here: below, you can see an island with packaged premade sandwiches, salads, and soups. Single-serve beverages are on the wall beyond that, with the service counters on the left side.
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